Friday, April 13, 2007

Disappointed after his failed quest to become president, Mr. Gore prayed for guidance.

"In what manner shall I spend my days?" he asked God.

God, who must have been exasperated at the time, allowed as to how He has become a little tired of the constant tinkering His job requires.

He replied, "Al, I can't stand the bickering. Find the thermostat that controls the Earth and set it so that the temperature is exactly right for those to whom I gave dominion.

"Just handle it, Al."

One of the reasons Al and God get along so well is they both speak in Old Testament cadences, only Al is the more ponderous of the two.

And that is how Al began his personal journey from the man who "used to be the next president of the United States" to candidate for Master of the Earth.

Without a scintilla of scientific support but with much more panache than the little man behind the screen in Wizard of Oz, mixed with the magic of the modern technology he eschews for others, Mr. Gore is well on his way to the mount from which he will order the skies to clear, the seas to settle and Earthly temperatures to stop doing what they've been doing for more than 200 million years.

Al Gore will order that Earth's weather stop changing!

Another voice that Al listens to is that of Stephen Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University.

Dr. Schneider is widely regarded as the father of the global warming as crisis school of science.

Before that Dr. Schneider served as the father of the global cooling as crisis school.

What Al learned from Dr. Schneider was the perfect lesson, whether one is tilting at global cooling or global warming,

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

And that is how Al Gore came to adopt the iconic photo of polar bears, allegedly adrift in the summer sun of the Beaufort Sea, north of Barrow, Alaska, as his own. The only trouble is, Al's use of the photo to describe global warming is just another Gore-toid, one of those facts that have no more relationship to reality than the Cheshire Cat.

Rather than a graphic example of bears in distress,clinging to life on the last firm footing on Earth, the two and a half year old photo shows two bears taking a break from seal hunting, resting on a wave-eroded floe a few miles off the coast on a summer Arctic day, at a time and place where such floes are natural and the ice breakup from which they spawn necessary for both the bears and their prey. The bears in the photo were in no danger. Polar bears as a species are in no danger. In fact, their numbers, up between 15% and 25% in recent years , are growing increasingly troublesome to villagers in the far north.

Dishonest photos of bears aside, Gore's real disservice is his adoption of the The Big Lie to deceive and misdirect.

Yes, the Earth is warming.

No news there, as the Earth been warming for about 150 years in its most recent phase, a recovery from a 500-year long mild ice age, which itself was a recovery from the 500-year long Medieval Warm Period. In fact, it was during the MWP that the Vikings occupied, farmed and named Greenland. When the temperatures fell in the 14th century, and Greenland became more white than green, the Vikings retreated to more hospitable climes.

By itself, this chart from Remembrance of Things Past: Greenhouse Lessons from the Geologic Record, a peer-reviewed article published by the U. S. Global Change Research Institute in 1996 and updated in 2004,would relegate Gore's "greenhouse gases" theory to a level of possibility but not probability. True believers, though, point out that the Industrial Age began late in the 18th century and so could have either started the warming or, at a minimum may be exacerbating it.

They base this theory on two "facts" regarding Earth's history:

The rate of warming is atypical; and/or

The amount of warming is atypical.

Neither is true.

As is apparent, even in relatively recent times, Earth's climate has seen changes where the rate or magnitude of temperature changes, or both, have equaled or exceeded what we're seeing at the moment. None of these changes can be ascribed to any action on the part of mankind. In the last 18,000 years there have been 4 times when the rate and magnitude was larger and a 5th time when the rate was as great with equal magnitude. In that same period, temperature changes have been larger than at present at least 19 times in the period. To put this in human perspective, 18,000 years ago the land upon which my home now stands was under ice, 5,000 feet of solid ice and had been for more than 100,000 years. So was much of North America and Europe.

Looking at history on a larger calendar does seem to lend credence to Mr. Gore's claim that the Earth is getting warmer. Good thing, too! Note that climatologists have named the two large temperature spikes in the past 200,000 years "Interglacial" periods. Interglacial as in between glaciers. Without the 8ºC global warming of the past 20,000 years we would quite literally not be here, no matter where here is. We can also see from this chart six major warming periods, each of which dwarfs by magnitudes the current experience, as well as dozens of others that are merely substantially greater.

Finally, when we stretch out our willingness to learn to nearly 1 million years, we can see both a warming trend and within that trend a series of warming cycles that appear to be both significant and non-random. Each of the ten major cycles are six- to ten-times as large as the current cycle and every one of the smaller ones are at least twice as large.

There is no evidence of man's involvement in any of these warming/cooling cycles.

None. Nada.

Which is exactly the same amount of evidence supporting Al Gore's perspective on the current warming cycle.

The computer models that Al and his acolytes are using to convince us of their ability to predict the future cannot even accurately "predict" the past.

Scientists use models in a number of very helpful ways. For instance, we rely on a very simple model to predict the time of sunrise tomorrow, or three days from now, or 15 years in the future. In each case we have substantial confidence that the model and its predictions are right. This is because they've been tested against the past, matched against historic records and found to accurately predict sunrise for every single day for which records are kept, whether yesterday, last week or 150 years ago. Imagine for a minute that it weren't so, that the models predicted sunrise a week ago today that was off by 15 minutes. Whoa! The intensity of scientific inquiry to solve that discrepancy would be incredible, and our confidence in future projections from that model and that scientist would be shaken to say the least. Now, imagine using a model that was unable to accurately forecast any past sunrise. Why would such a model gain any currency, any credibility?

It wouldn't.

That's the state of the current global warming/climate crisis discussion. The models being used to predict the future are utterly unable to accurately predict any past warming/cooling cycle. It doesn't matter the time frame, they are inaccurate over the past 20 years, 200 years, 200,000 years. In fact, there is no period for which they have proven to be accurate.

Not one.

We are left with two truly inconvenient truths:

There is no evidence whatsoever connecting the actions of mankind with any of the Earth's history of hundreds of climate cycles.

There is no evidence whatsoever confirming the validity of the mathematical models supporting Al Gore's vision of the future.